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Kingkiller Chronicle Wiki:Manual of style
The Manual of Style (often abbreviated MOS) is a style guide for all articles and official documents in the . Please review the below procedures before editing or adding articles to this wiki. General guidelines *The series of books is referred to as The Kingkiller Chronicle, or more briefly "The Chronicle." This does not include books or short stories outside the trilogy. *Recounting detailed accounts of the plot is not what the wiki is for. Articles should be limited to a brief overview of the most important aspects of the character, location, or object. *Upon completion of the article it is customary to link back to other pages within the wiki, this promotes quick travel between articles. If you use the name of another article in your page, it should be linked to only on the first instance that it is mentioned. *It is customary to add at least one category to every page. *If you wish to edit a page, but find that you cannot completely adhere to the above standards, please mark that page as a stub before publishing it. This will assist other contributors in locating the article to assist with the formatting. *Images are a great way to break up an article and give it a completed look. If you can find an image that pertains to the text, please add it to the article. The first photo should appear at the top of the page on either the right or left side inside the infobox. Subsequent photos should be added to a gallery at the bottom of the article. Please review our image policy before uploading any images. Article titles An article title is a convenient label for the article, which distinguishes it from other articles. Choice of title Article titles are based on how the books in The Kingkiller Chronicle series and other primary sources refer to the article's subject. A good title meets the following five criteria, and if these criteria are in conflict, they need to be balanced against one another. #'Recognizability': The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with the subject area will recognize. #'Naturalness': The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English. #'Precision': The title is sufficiently precise to unambiguously identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects. #'Conciseness': The title is no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects. #'Consistency': The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles. We prefer the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in the sources) as such names will be the most recognizable and the most natural. Although original, full or scientific names may sound logical for article titles, the term or name most typically and frequently used in reliable sources is generally preferred. It also helps to avoid spoilers. For example, Maer Alveron is used as a title instead of his full name Maershon Lerand Alveron, as it is most commonly used in the sources and it avoids confusion. There is often more than one appropriate title for an article. In that case, editors choose the best title by consensus based on the considerations that this page explains. should be created to articles that may reasonably be searched for or linked to under two or more names (such as different spellings or former names). For example, the page Dianne, Donna and many other nicknames redirect to Denna. It is not always possible to use the exact title that may be desired for an article, as that title may have other meanings, and therefore may have been already used for other articles. According to the above-mentioned precision criterion, when a more detailed title is necessary to distinguish an article topic from another, use only as much additional detail as necessary, placed in parentheses behind the title. For example, it would be appropriate to title an article Copper (metal), as the addition of (metal) is precise enough to distinguish the title from other uses of the term copper. Title format The following points are used in deciding on questions not covered by the five principles; consistency on these helps avoid duplicate articles: *Use "sentence case", not "title case"; that is, the initial letter of a title is capitalized, but otherwise, capital letters are used only where they would be used in a normal sentence. For example, Fae magic, not Fae Magic, and Plum bob, not Plum Bob. *Use the singular form: Article titles are generally singular in form. For example, Demon, not Demons. *Generally, do not use A, An, or The as the first word. For example, moon, not The Moon, or Jot, not A jot. The exception is that these words are by convention an inseparable part of a name, like The Ruach or it is part of the title of a work, like The Slow Regard of Silent Things. *Use names without ranks for characters: Articles about characters should avoid the title or rank, unless the character is known only by the title. For example, Dennais Threpe, not Count Dennais Trepe. Writing style Perspectives Articles in the wiki belong to one of the following types: *'In-universe articles' should be written as if the world of Temerant is the real world. The articles should have a writing style representative of a text that a character in the Chronicle might be reading for information on something in their own world. Characters, creatures, locations and other in-universe things should therefore not be treated as fictional constructs. References to things in "our" world, including references to published works and individuals, should be avoided. *'Out-of-universe articles' should be written from "our" perspective. This includes all information on the author, the Kingkiller-based products, books, etc. Neutrality *Please avoid inferences stated as fact. Do your best not to draw conclusions or state speculation as a fact no matter how obvious or likely it may be. This includes statements on the emotional state and/or motivations of characters. *Remember that the books in the Chronicle are narrated by Kote. Contributors should remember that these events are being related by a fallible source even though he is the only narrator one has from which to draw facts or descriptions of things for the vast majority of the events described in the books. Contributers should be doubly wary when phrasing content about anything which the narrator is even the slightest bit uncertain. Formality Writing should be clear and concise. Plain English works best. Avoid ambiguity, jargon, and vague or unnecessarily complex wording. *'Formal use of language' is mandatory on all articles. Attempt whenever possible to use proper language and avoid slang, casual and informal phrasing, and colloquialisms. Think of any article you are writing or editing as an entry in an encyclopedia. For example, "Kvothe is a talented musician", not "Kvothe is awesome in music". *'Contested vocabulary': Avoid such phrases as "remember that" and "note that", which address readers directly in an unencyclopedic tone. Similarly, phrases such as "of course", "naturally", "obviously", "clearly," and "actually" make presumptions about readers' knowledge, and call into question the reason for including the information in the first place. Do not tell readers that something is ironic, surprising, unexpected, amusing, coincidental, etc. Simply state the sourced facts and allow readers to draw their own conclusions. Grammar tense In in-universe articles the past tense must be used on any event articles, articles describing entities that are deceased or no longer exist, or sections of any in-universe article detailing past events. For example, "The Creation War was a terrible conflict of the Ergen Empire". Present tense must only be used on any location, creature, and character article, where this does not conflict with the other guideline. For example, "Kote is an innkeeper at the Waystone Inn". The current in-universe time in the wiki is generally considered to be fixed at the end of the last published book which is furthest down the timeline. Text formatting Spelling In English there is a national variety of the language, e.g. American English vs. British English. These varieties differ in many ways, including vocabulary (elevator vs. lift), spelling (center vs. centre), date formatting ("April 13" vs. "13 April"), and occasionally grammar. Check out Comparison of American and British English article on Wikipedia to determine the differences between the varieties. In order to increase the consistency, American spelling should be used on all canon encyclopedia articles in the wiki, on any templates, on all official projects and blog posts. This is to reflect the American origin of The Kingkiller Chronicle series. Regional variations in spelling may be used in all other contexts in the wiki, such as comments, talk pages, user pages, blog posts and fanon. Capital letters Unnecessary capitalization should be avoided. For example, use "mommet" rather than Mommet. This is sometimes referred to as the "down style". Capitalization should be reserved for proper names only. The following points are noteworthy: *'Capitalization of "The"': Generally do not capitalize "the" in the middle of a sentence. For example, "Kvothe went to the University" (not "to The University"). However there are some conventional exceptions, including most titles of artistic works. For example, "Kvothe played The Lay of Sir Savien Traliard". *'Titles': In generic use, apply lower case for words such as "emperor" and "king". For example, "Roderic Calanthis is the king of Vintas". **In parts of a person's title, begin such words with a capital letter, like "King Roderic", not "king Roderic". **Royal styles are capitalized ("His Highness"); exceptions may apply for particular offices. *'Calendar items': Names of months, days of the week, and holidays start with a capital letter ("Reaping", "Felling"), whereas the units of time ("span", "month", "hour") and seasons are in lower case ("summer"), except in personifications or in proper names for periods or events ("Winter Pageant"). *'Animals, plants, and other creatures': Any flora and fauna are written in lower case in article prose ("skin dancer") and in sentence case at the start of article titles, sentences, headings and other places where the first letter of the first word is capitalized. They are additionally capitalized where they contain proper names: "Kvothe's cat". *'Astronomical bodies': When used generally, the words "sun" and "moon" do not take capitals. For example, "The moon was stolen by Iax". *'Locations': Generic words for establishments and political or geographical units (cities, towns, and countries) do not take capitals. For example, "Kvothe went to back to the town". Names of institutions and political or geographical units are proper nouns and require capitals, like "Kvothe went back to Tarbean". Italics *Use italics for the titles of works of literature and art, such as books, pamphlets, films (including short films), television series, music albums, and paintings e.g. The Slow Regard of Silent Things. The titles of articles, chapters, songs, and other short works are not italicized. *Italics may be used sparingly to emphasize words in sentences (whereas boldface is normally not used for this purpose). Generally, the more highlighting in an article, the less its effectiveness. Use italics when introducing or distinguishing among terms. For example: "Kvothe thought it was his fault that this happened, not hers." Numbers *In general, write whole numbers one through nine as words, write other numbers that take two words or fewer to say as either numerals or words, and write all other numbers as numerals: 1/5 or one fifth, 84 or eighty-four, 200 or two hundred, but 3.75, 544, 21 million). This applies to both ordinal and cardinal numbers. *Use a comma to delimit numbers with four or more digits to the left of the decimal point: "12,345" and "1,000". See also *Layout guide External links *Wikipedia's Manual of Style